No better way to be Latin American: European science and thought, Latin American theory?

Abstract

Twentieth-century Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui wanted to give a Peruvian and indigeneous face to socialism in his country. He embraced Marxism as a method, but its application meant challenging many of its temporal and spatial assumptions. The encounter of European ideas with the Latin American experience was itself theoretically productive. It is paradoxical then that when defending his project, he evoked the name of the unabashedly Euro-centric nineteenth century Argentine liberal Domingo Sarmiento, whose 1845 book Facundo, or Civilization and Barbarism embraced European ideas a the source of progress in Argentine and associated all that is indigenous with barbarism and backwardness. However, in spite of Sarmiento's explicit celebration of European ideas, the text itself is filled with examples of how European ideas fail to take root in Argentine and thus illustrates how the local overwhelms the universal. In revealing the limits and inadequacy of European theory, its calls, albeit unintentionally, for a new theorizing that Mariátegui would later take up. Both theorists then suggest that the practice of theory be understood as emerging from and gaining autonomy from orthodoxy via sustained engagement with the local, which then leads to generalizing anew.

Notes

¹ Thanks to Jane Gorden, Ivan Marquez, James Martel, Neil Roberts, and Megan Thomas for their comments on various drafts of this essay. I am particularly grateful to Jimmy Casas Klausen for his sustained engagement with this essay and for his critical insights. Finally, I would like to thank Vanita Seth and the rest of the editorial board at Postcolonial Studies.

² Walter D Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p 9.

³ See, for instance, Simón Bolívar, ‘Jamaica Letter: Response from a South American to a Gentleman from this Island’ and ‘The Angostura Address’, in El Libertador: Writings of Simón Bolívar, D Bushnell (ed), F Fornoff (trans), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp 12–53; José Martí, ‘Our America’, in Selected Writings, E Allen (ed and trans), New York: Penguin Classics, 2002, pp 288–296.

⁴ Anibal A Quijano, ‘Paradoxes of Modernity in Latin America’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 3(2), 1989, pp 147–177.

⁵ Marc Becker, Mariátegui and Latin American Marxist Theory, Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1993; Mario Castro Arenas, Reconstrucción de Mariátegui, Lima: Okura Editores, 1985; and Javier Mariátegui et al, José Carlos Mariátegui y Europa: El Otro Aspecto del Descubrimiento, Lima: Amauta, 1994; Enrique Krauze, Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America, New York: HarperCollins, 2011; Thomas Angotti, ‘The Contributions of Jose Carlos Mariategui to Revolutionary Theory’, Latin American Perspectives 13(2), 1986, pp 33–57; Harry E Vanden, ‘Mariátegui: Marxismo, Comunismo, and Other Bibliographic Notes’, Latin American Research Review 14(3), 1979, pp 61–86.

⁶ José Carlos Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971, p xxxiv.

⁷ Domingo F Sarmiento, Facundo, or Civilization and Barbarism, New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

⁸ Joshua Lund, ‘Barbarian Theorizing and the Limits of Latin American Exceptionalism’, Cultural Critique 47, 2001, p 59.

⁹ Ilan Stavans, ‘Introduction’, in Sarmiento, Facundo, p xxxii.

¹⁰ José Carlos Mariátegui, ‘The Unity of Indo-Hispanic America’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, M Pearlman (ed), Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996, p 115; Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p xxxiv.

¹¹ Krauze, Redeemers, pp 89–90.

¹² Krauze, Redeemers, pp 92–93.

¹³ Krauze, Redeemers, p 102.

¹⁴ Michael Pearlman, ‘Introduction’, in Mariátegui, The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p xvii; Angotti, ‘Contributions of Jose Carlos Mariategui’, p 36; Vanden, ‘Mariátegui’, p 63.

¹⁵ Krauze, Redeemers, p 101.

¹⁶ Vanden, ‘Mariátegui’, p 69.

¹⁷ Mariátegui, ‘Message to the Worker's Congress’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p 76.

¹⁸ Both dramatically reinterpreted Marxism in light of their own country's experience and challenged the dogmatic directives of the Soviet Comintern. Both wrote on the negative implications of Fordism and Taylorism, both reacted against Marxist dogmatism in their work and their political praxis, and both emphasized the importance of culture in class struggle. They also both came from working-class backgrounds. Becker, Mariátegui and Latin American Marxist Theory, p 39.

¹⁹ See Antonio Gramsci, ‘The Study of Philosophy’, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York: International, 1971.

²⁰ Mariátegui, ‘Man and Myth’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p 145.

²¹ Mariátegui, ‘Man and Myth’, p 145.

²² Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p xxxiv.

²³ Mariátegui, ‘Message to the Worker's Congress’, p 78.

²⁴ Mariátegui, ‘May Day and the United Front’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p 61.

²⁵ Robbie Shilliam, ‘Hegemony and the Unfashionable Problem of “Primitive Accumulation”’, Millennium-Journal of International Studies 32(1), 2004, p 67. Shilliam argues that Gramsci's discussion of hegemony was less about how the struggle for socialism was different in the West, than a contribution to a concept introduced by Russian Marxism as ‘an assessment of the exigencies and potentialities of social transformation out of quasi-feudalism in the face of an unresolved process of primitive accumulation’.

²⁶ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 5.

²⁷ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 9.

²⁸ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 63.

²⁹ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 70.

³⁰ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 7.

³¹ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 16.

³² Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 21.

³³ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 80.

³⁴ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 21.

³⁵ Mariátegui, ‘Man and Myth’, p 145.

³⁶ Mariátegui, ‘Gandhi’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p 49.

³⁷ The university along with the university reforms of 1919 ‘together indicated pedagogy as a transformational practice of modern citizenship, popular empowerment and integration’. Gareth Williams, The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, p 48. The university would also serve as a means by which the multi-class Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) could strengthen its contacts with labor and the student movement.

³⁸ Krauze, Redeemers, p 104.

³⁹ Krauze, Redeemers, p 104.

⁴⁰ Mariátegui, ‘Nationalism and Vanguardism’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p 71.

⁴¹ Mariátegui, ‘The Programmatic Principles of the Socialist Party’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p 92.

⁴² Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 58.

⁴³ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 59.

⁴⁴ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 61, n 23

⁴⁵ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 57.

⁴⁶ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 58.

⁴⁷ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, pp 31–32.

⁴⁸ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 74, n 15.

⁴⁹ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 35.

⁵⁰ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p 74, n 15.

⁵¹ Krauze, Redeemers, p 114.

⁵² Mariátegui, ‘Anniversary and Balance Sheet’, in The Heroic and Creative Meaning of Socialism, p 89.

⁵³ Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, p xxxiv.

⁵⁴ He contrasts, for instance, the filth and idleness of the towns of the Spanish and the aborigines to ‘German and Scotch colonies in the Southern part of Argentina’, where houses and grounds are well kept and residents are always hard at work. Sarmiento, Facundo, p 17.

⁵⁵ Gaucho is a nineteenth-century term referring to the rural populations of South America who lived primarily from cattle herding and hunting.

⁵⁶ Stavans, ‘Introduction’, p xx.

⁵⁷ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 13.

⁵⁸ Stavans, ‘Introduction’, p ix.

⁵⁹ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 15.

⁶⁰ Sarmiento, Facundo, pp 18, 27.

⁶¹ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 20.

⁶² Sarmiento, Facundo, p 19.

⁶³ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 24.

⁶⁴ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 27.

⁶⁵ He writes, for instance: ‘The gaucho arrives at the spot on his best steed, riding at a slow and measured pace; he halts at a little distance and puts his leg over his horse's neck to enjoy the sight leisurely. If enthusiasm seizes him, he slowly dismounts, uncoils his lasso, and flings it at some bull, passing like a flash of lightning forty paces from him; he catches him by one hoof, as he intended, and quietly coils his leather cord again.’ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 27.

⁶⁶ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 25.

⁶⁷ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 38.

⁶⁸ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 43.

⁶⁹ Adriana Novoa notes that Sarmiento the historical figure was obsessed with consumption and associated civilized status simply with having certain items and manners. Others criticized him for his superficial understanding of what it meant to be civilized. ‘The Dilemmas of Male Consumption in Nineteenth-Century Argentina: Fashion, Consumerism and Darwinism in Domingo Sarmiento and Juan B. Alberdi’, Journal of Latin American Studies 39(4), 2007, pp 775, 788.

⁷⁰ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 19.

⁷¹ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 139.

⁷² Sarmiento, Facundo, p 12.

⁷³ Sarmiento, Facundo, p 146.

⁷⁴ Carlos J Alonso, ‘Reading Sarmiento: Once More, with Passion’, Hispanic Review 62(1), 1994, p 38.

⁷⁵ Alonso, ‘Reading Sarmiento’, p 41.

⁷⁶ Alonso, ‘Reading Sarmiento’, p 44.

⁷⁷ Alonso, ‘Reading Sarmiento’, p 45.